PEORIA, Ill. – Peoria City Council members gave their blessing to a temporary plan to store solid waste while a new landfill gets built.
Council unanimously approved a plan where GFL would build a transfer station at its affiliate site in Pottstown while Landfill No. 3 gets built. The plan was approved last month by the Peoria County Board, with the Peoria City/County Landfill Committee expected to vote on the matter at a meeting on Wednesday.
The transfer station is expected to be operational by March 31, 2026. GFL would then have until January 1, 2035 to complete construction and start operations at the new landfill site.
The ten year timeframe would give GFL a buffer to work out issues from the Illinois EPA, such as whether mines exist on the proposed site.
The need for a new landfill has been prominent due to the estimation that Landfill No. 2 is expected to reach capacity by the end of this year. Prior agreements with GFL called for the construction of Landfill No. 3 to be built prior to that, with waste to have been accepted there starting in 2014.
The agreement will also call for a discount in tipping fees of $56.37 per ton, which Peoria City Manager Patrick Urich says will save the city around $1.5 million each year.
“We feel like we’ve ended in a very good spot with this agreement, and it will provide certainty of our cost of waste disposal for the next 30 to potentially 40 years,” Urich said.
Urich says rates for Peoria residents will not change, and he also expects to use any savings to reduce the deficit in the city’s solid waste fund.
The agreement also calls for the establishment of a monthly household hazardous waste recycling events.
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